an artist, a mad man (a creature of infinite melancholy)
by Clarice Waters
Summary: Seneca Crane has a predilection he has only ever fed once. He realizes it is time to give recompense. Trigger Warning listed inside at the top.
**Trigger Warnings:** Strongly Implied Pedophilia

* * *

an artist, a mad man _(a creature of infinite melancholy)_

This is how things carry on:

'I volunteer!' she cries. 'I volunteer as tribute!'

 _(But this is how they begin:_

 _'What is your name, pretty girl?' he asks. She is insubstantial in his lap and he thumbs an easy mark above her knee._

 _'Katniss' she replies above a tremor. 'Katniss Everdeen.')_

THG THG THG THG THG

She is different than he remembers, of course she is. All height and age and almost curves that would be curves if she hailed from a better to do district than Twelve. She has filled out now though, in all the ways regular men love but are useless to him. Straight-backed and seemingly unaffected she takes place next to Trinket, her face blank and yet still determined. A woman of purpose, is the unspoken.

 _(The first time he sees her she is eleven, and far from his ideal. At 4'9 and sallow in a thin wallpaper patterned dress of Gypsophilia she is self-contained and sullen. The door clicks shut behind her and Carl's heavy hippopotamus footsteps echo down the hall before Seneca even has the chance to turn her away, to tell Carl no.)_

It takes him awhile to notice that his lips are quivering and that something inside of him is rising to the surface, unraveling right before him and he can't control it. He should be indifferent - he's not, and that's another question that remains, full and hollow and forever lonely without it's mate. It's the first time he understands the gravity of his own emotion, the spiral that it creates or had been created.

 _(He doesn't know how Carl found out about this particular proclivity, figures the only secrets that can be kept in The Capital must be Snows. He isn't even eligible for_ consideration _as Head Gamemaker for another two years, and that's usually when the wooing from the districts starts, but if District Twelve was willing to invite him out here, to offer up a girl in sacrifice, then that meant they thought he was a sure thing._

 _It also meant that they were in desperate need of a Victor.)_

When time comes to escort both tributes into the Justice building, he spots the subtle nudge of a Peacekeepers rifle in her lower back. His lip curls with indignation at the implication. She won't try to run, he wants to say, she won't. Seneca Crane knows exactly the lengths Katniss Everdeen is willing to go for her sister.

 _(He likes to think he is a good man, but he knows he's a selfish one and the possibility of skin against skin, the thought alone, seems to burn. (At least, that is how it's easiest to rationalise.)_

 _The thought of opening the door again, so that she may leave does not occur to him at all.)_

THG THG THG THG THG 

He excuses himself from the Post-Parade festivities, citing exhaustion from last minute Games preparations. On the way home he is more aware than he has ever been in perhaps his entire life. Of the wine and the wind, of the warmth of his jacket, and the bitter reality of having his most regrettable mistake unearthed so close to home.

It's the first time, in a long time, where he's just had a moment to himself and not the straying thoughts of— he doesn't even push himself. It's much easier to discern, now, what thoughts will push him into the subversive line of thinking. It's much easier to know which thoughts will kill him.

 _(He has plenty of theories, and maybe it's the price of wanting and not having, but the longer he looks at her the more appealing she becomes. Her hair is long and thick, her eyes sharp. Her features are not unattractive. His gaze falls to the angles and planes of her dress and he imagines water collecting in the basins of her collarbones, the grotesque jut of her hipbones and ribs, and in this way she is perfect. Somewhere, he thinks she must have a mother and a father, perhaps a sibling or two equally as wasted and dependent on whatever Carl will afford her for her services tonight. She needs him as he needs her, though not in the same way. It puts the two of them on equal footing.)_

In the interviews he plays her off as a point of interest. "When ever we have a volunteer from an outlining district, it's something you can't ignore." But the truth is that she's been balanced on the edge of every thought he's had for the last five years. He thinks he might be obsessed - though he'd rather not use that word.

He uses others: intrigued, fascinated, curious. He likes 'curious' best because it affords him the most room to move. Like, while he doesn't have to and knows that he shouldn't, he is going to join the others on the training floor observation deck, because he's only human, and we are all subjects to our own curiosities.

He thinks of her on the chariot, a giant aflame in front of him, all around him, on the screen and everywhere. The new District Twelve stylists have risen the bar and the crowd and cameras alike couldn't seem to get enough of her. On the inside he was ecstatic, good coverage is conducive to more sponsors. On the outside he'd calmly given Snow his cue.

 _(He takes her up onto his lap, his fingers brushing against her thigh, and they've settled to a strange repertoire of odd quirks and stilted responses when he realizes that he could do this, he could give in just this once. Create a memory so perfect it would sooth the ache when future temptation proved almost too much.)_

There were words for what he'd done to her - ugly words. Words that have nothing to do with how his chest tightens in affection whenever he thinks of her, with the tender intensity in which he'd held her between couplings. The way he'd petted her hair and her skin and wiped away her tears. Words he refused to believe applied at all. How could they when what he'd shared with the child had had nothing to do with hate or violence at all? Still, the color of her screams, muted beneath his hand - that shrieking hoarseness is something he's not going to forget. Can't forget or drown out with so many glasses of wine or too many hours of work.

 _(For months afterwards he dives deeper into his work than ever he has, and when forced up for air he gets drunker than he's ever seen Abernathy manage. It's no coincidence that he's engaged in a profession that keeps him so busy he's hard pressed to remember that he even has a body, let alone what it wants.)_

THG THG THG THG THG

This is how it ends:

He's not scared.

Really, he's not.

It's not exhaustion, it's perspective. He did something terrible once, and he understands that time has come for him to pay up.

 _(He keeps up his end of the deal, though there's only so much he can do from the outside. For the three years he is Head Gamekeeper, District Twelve tributes survive longer than they have since the last Quarter Quell. He wonders if they have any idea with what that extra time was bought.)_

He doesn't eat the berries because Snow wants him to. Or because he is certain that those doors won't open again until he does. He eats them because five years ago he gave in to his urges and fucked an eleven year old child.

He figures he probably owes her this much anyway.

* * *

So here is a terrible thing. A therapeutic piece requested by a friend. Here's hoping she got something out of it.

You got to kill him sweety, even if it was only in a shitty fanfiction.


End file.
